Thursday, July 2, 2009

More channel updates

As you've probably seen over at the main YouTube blog, we'll be coming out of beta soon and moving all existing channels over to the new design. But that doesn't mean we're all done with updates and bug fixes yet. Your feedback and bug reports have been invaluable in our ongoing development, and it's about time for another round of "here's what's new, and here's what's coming."

So what's new?

Speed improvements - there were some reports of channels running a little sluggishly in a few cases. Let us know if you notice a difference. We might have a few other tweaks to play with here, too.

Fixed the bug where scrollbars would sometimes break when an ad appeared

The search box is now visible within the uploads section, no matter your background color

URLs are now autolinked in the video description (and still coming for all channel descriptions)

Lots and lots of other bugfixes

And what's on the todo list?

Transparency - yes, we've sorted through a few of the stickier issues, and we now expect to offer transparency options before we move all remaining accounts over to new channels

Custom ordering of uploads & your list of playlists

Letting you default to either player view or grid view

In-line branding options for partners (no need to go off to a separate page)

IE 8.0 bugfixes - some things look a little strange right now in IE8

Full screen controls

Showing the upload date in the video "info" area

Showing the video length in the thumbnail

Other assorted bugfixes, many found thanks to your reports

And more...

Thanks everyone - as always, drop us a line in the comments with your bug reports and feedback. Don't forget to mention your channel name if you have problems with your channel specifically. And for those of you in the US - happy 4th weekend!

405 comments:

I think the "Custom ordering of uploads & your list of playlists" would be useful for the list of subscribers, suscriptions, friends, etc. as well...I would prefer to be able to choose which 10 or so subscriptions of mine are being displayed on my profile.

I know the chances of this being implemented is limited. The main problem with the new design is that it limits the amount that people can display on their channel now. I personally used the organize videos to display the videos I want people to see in my favorites and videos section. That gives me 18 display slots plus 2 for the vlog.

I think to resolve this issue you should do a version of the channel that combines the grid view and the player view. Have the player above the grid and then have a two row 3 column grid of videos and separate two row 3 column grid for favorites with scroll bars or paging.

To me the only real improvement over the old channel is the ability to show ads on your channel.

You guys have the stats on this but it seem to me that people are more likely to click on a ad on the view page and by making the channel the central focus people are less likely to click on ad because it so much else going on on the page now.

Also, you are going to let up customized how many rows of friends, subscriptions, subscribers on your channels. You should let up organized those people like videos. When she be able to set our Top friends and subscription because I use my channel as a index page for the people I like to check on. You should do especially since you did Realtime. Ok Hyperwire already said what I said. LOL!!!

Also, if you have our list of favorites then you should give us the ability to search our favorites just like videos. You guys let us add hundreds of favorites but don't let us search them. Does that really make sense?

I think YT seriously needs to listen to the community, and read the comments to the announcement post of the official YouTube blog. People are blacking out their channels, removing videos, and protesting, and many are planning to leave YouTube all together on the 15th when these new channels come into effect. And that's why the improvement I think needs to be made, is to make them optional. The majority want to keep their own channels, and I think it's YouTube's duty to not dissappoint them.

wow, great round of updates and bugfixes guys, kudos. thanks a lot, it really feels faster to appear and start playing.

the dynamic resizing of the boxes is really annoying tho, maybe allow to keep a "blank" space for honnors and always scroll the comments atarting at a certain number of lines, no matter how many comments(cause people leave long comments sometimes, which again messes up the layout)

if the wrapper could disapear at least it would look nice(i guess it goes with transparency) but still an option for "none" for the wrapper would be really nice

One thing I've found kind of annoying, is if a video has no comments and you go to view them on your channel, the box is empty. That makes it look like it didn't load or something. You should just put "no comments" or something just to let the viewer know.

- Full screen controls - does this mean being able to right-click videos into new tabs? - Please do not allow the featured video on user pages to auto-play, or allow us to disable this in our preferences - I often click on the user page while watching one of their videos, only to have an auto-play video create a mess. The sound has been turned off on ads, thank God, but why now allow videos, of all things, to autoplay?? - Also re preferences - when I click the preference for always having videos playback in "high quality", it will not stick. Even though I'm always on a high speed internet line, many videos still simply default to "normal" quality.- Enable all playlists tagged as publicly viewable to show up on the playlists tab by default -- that's what that option is there for, and those of us with large numbers of playlists do not want to have to go through and re-check everything.- Please *preserve the line breaks* in our video and playlist descriptions wherever they are displayed. The only time the line breaks are preserved now is when you click "more info" in the video description (but not i.e. when I'm viewing my "uploaded videos" in my account). In playlists, they are only preserved in the "Playlists" window of the old user page, but not on the description of the actual playlist when you open it up (!), or on the new user page at all.- It would be a good idea to make the "leave comment" (or "send message") link more visible (i.e. like making it a button). Not everyone wants to leave public channel comments, and in the new version, there is no obvious "connect with so-and-so" box.- There needs to be more module options for the lower section so we can balance the columns. (a Favorites box, an "about-me" box like on the partner channels, connect with the user, pictures, etc.)

Another option to consider:Folders, ideally nesting folders, for our playlists and videos, so we can organize them - especially useful for those of us with hundred of videos and dozens of playlists.

I've got a problem in the admin section of my channel - when I click on the postion number of a video in a playlist and type in a new number to reorder my videos, the function only works once. If I try to click on another number nothing happens. I have to refresh the page before the function will return.

the personal profiles, the online friends, and things to make youtube more like a social network are probably futile. you might prove me wrong though, but i'm sure that most of the users will still use youtube only for videos.

From what I can tell so far, this new format is for someone who wants to point at the channel and say, "What a nice, new clean- looking page," as opposed to actually watching any videos. You're selling us on how everything can be done from the channel page, when that's a disadvantage, not an advantage, because it takes longer and it's harder to find or do anything, except watch the featured channel video. I mean you still have to click the video title (twice if it's not the featured video) to see the comments, response and related videos, so how could you possibly tell us this is an improvement? An improvement for whom? It's called a spin, right?I see hotforwords has expressed a number of concerns here and she should because I can almost promise that people aren't going to have the patience to navigate from her channel page to watch her older videos with this so-called upgrade. And she has independently produced a treasury of entertaining content. Don't forget: to see your ads, people have to able to see the videos.I tested a partner's site with 50,000 subs. Some of the links just didn't work. When I tried to view all her uploads,the screenshots were overlapping. It was a mess.Then I tried to watch one of Nalt's first videos starting from his channel and it took forever.This design is not user-friendly or content-friendly, from a video viewer's point of view.Just like it's always been literally impossible to read all the comments on a video with more than a few hundred (you knew that, right? When you click through a few numbered links at the bottom of the comments, it doesn't continue - it jumps to the first page of comments. You guys have shrugged this off when the comments function complements the videos so well. You're ignoring one of your strengths.), it will now be very difficult to view all uploads, favorites, and playlists. Having all that crammed on one space on one page doesn't really get it because as I say, even if you think it looks better, you just can't get to the videos to watch them. People come on here to watch videos, and videomakers want their videos seen.I just took a survey: as of now, nobody on the front page of the all time most subscribed list has voluntarily switched over to the new format. Doesn't that tell you something? (You touted sexephil when even he has switched back to the older, better format.) Apparently all of them will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this God-awful change by July 29th just like I will on July 15th.I would go so far to say that anybody who really thinks about it, who cares about content, doesn't like it. At best, they're gritting their teeth to accept it.The "hulu.com scare" didn't really happen, but you guys did this to us instead - I'm told to cut costs on pixels and bandwidth. YouTube will never be the same for anyone who has enjoyed it up to this point.

ginsenguy is spot on with his comment. It seems you guys are so interested in what can be done you haven't stopped and thought what should be done. I always want my sites to enhance my useage but this change is a step back, yes it does look really nice but it just isn't user friendly at all.

Yay! I'm excited for the new changes! But here are a few changes that I'd like to see.

1) A small link next to each video that will take you to the regular video page. Although it's cool that you don't have to load up a new webpage, I still would use this every now & then.2) The ability to show ONLY a few of my latest uploads & a certain playlist in the ALL section. But keep all of my other playlists & other stuff available in the other sections.

Also, ignore all the haters of launch date. Just give it a week after the date & everyone will get used to it.

Excellent, that's just about everything I suggested... almost. I still think that the "Subscribe" and "+Friend" box could look a little nicer, and it'd be nice if we could either re-order our friends / subscriptions on display, or have the option to scroll through them all on the same page, rather than having to change pages. The ability to resize some boxes (eg, by showing 5 comments at a time instead of ten) would also be nice.

A feature I would like would be to be able to chose which of your subscribers and friends show up on your channel. I have some very high ranking subscribers that I would like to "showoff" instead of the ones I have right now (some are even deleted accounts that show up).

Good to hear about transparency, that's a really neccessary option to make a great Channel. What about "Video log" YouTube friends? You know, i like to show more than one player on my Channel, that choice lets us show other user's videos without taking our own feautured videos out, it's a kind of help, a way to say "i liked your video and i'd like to show it on my Channel as well" Think about it, i don't see any problem to include two little players on our new Channels.

the buttons (subscribe and friend) are big and really don't look nice, why don't just make it a link like it was in the connect box instead, at least the colors would match (cause yellow and blue is kind of meh)

whatever you do, do not remove tha autoplay and continuous lay it'S PRIMORDIAL (and if the uploads could be made to auto continue that would be even better)

as memyselfandpi said, ignore the haters and the crybabies, 1 week after launch they would all be quiet again (and we wil be rid of SO many spammes, youtube will be like new and clean)

overall fantastic job, and with the image maps, i can finally put my youtube channel as my home page now that its possible to link to all other sections of my real website from my youtube account(check it out, it went out pretty nice http://youtube.com/muzik4machines )

The #1 reason why I don't like the new beta channels is that a people who don't have a widescreen monitor can't see my channel background on the side. With the old design people can scroll down and see it below my favorites. The new boxes (which is WAY too twitter-like) take up too much EMPTY space and don't allow backgrounds to peak out.

I don't understand what's so hard about giving people an option between the two types of channels. It seems these channels were designed just to imrprove the revenue of partners and reduce costs for YouTube, while that's a good business plan for YouTube, this, judging by the comments is likely to completely flop and make people go to other video streaming websites.

Youtube started mass video streaming on the website, but it seems that these new channels will allow another site to create something that almost replicates the current YouTube, and for everyone to move to that site, unless users aren't forced with the new channels.

1) Disable autoplay, especially when browsing a YT partner channel (option in settings ?). That's one of the most annoying things.

2) Something that I haven't read anywhere... Please increase the max size of the background pictures. 256 Kb is ridiculous.

3) Let the choice for what to display first on channel. For example, I'd like to show "Uploads" with the "Grid View" on my channel instead of the video + list on the right.

4) Fix a bug : when someone sent us a Friend invite, it says "Add as a Friend" instead of "Approve Friend Invite" on his channel. Maybe it's because I use the French youtube version and it's a translation problem.

5) Let us move the blocks as we want.

6) Needs more info on the Grid View, such as rating & length.

7) Show the 3 thumbnails of a video when pointing it with the cursor.

=Non-channels=8) What is the video limit in playlists ? I heard it is 200 but when embeding a playlist, the player can't play more than the 50 first ones.

9) PLEASE update the messaging system... For people who gets like 50 messages per day, it'd be useful to class them by author, date, and search among past messages.

You asked for what we need, now I hope you'll still hear comments, otherwise people will keep hating these 2.0 channels. I don't think you realize how much people hates them at the moment…

i dont think so, big talkers but little doers this bunch are, they talk a lot but they don't act, way to affraid to lose their all important view count to brag to their friends about, they are mostly lazy people who don't want to take time to design new backgrounds/make the channel cool, so many of us did, why can't they

and it looks like all the complainers are not aware of the My-Account page where they can see all their lame favorites/friends/subs without EVER going to their channel (i see my channels maybe once a month to see if everything is allright, every action on youtube is SUPPOSED to be carried from the My_acocunt page, those who keep telling they cant find their favorites on the page are the one who have yet to understand how to use the page made especially for that, the channel is for others to see your stuff, an for that the new one is WAY better than the old one, people can finally see all your uploads in on epage without having to leave the playing video

anyway, thanks brian, the add making the bottom of the uploads box diseapear is fixed too, it seems everything is almost ready :)

@Brian - I must say I am getting used to the new layout. I was hesitant at first, but I did the plunge and I think the layout looks great on my channel ( PCWizKid ). Thanks Youtube! Just dont take away anything else thats there already ;-)

@ Muzik 4 Machines: For all I know Brian's probably paying you to use the beta channels and say good things about it. But if he isn't, let me tell you two things: First, SO many users are protesting against the beta channel, that if you guys enforce it on all of us, YouTube will lose popularity. Second, OK, maybe mos people who hate the beta channel are spammers, but they're fighting for what they believe in! None of this would be going on if you would just keep the channels optional! We will leave, but it won't be good for YouTube AT ALL. If it ain't broken, DON'T FIX IT!!

I have a bug. I just started making playlist, the first one showed up on my beta channel but I have made two more and they wont show up on my channel the count says there is oly one. could you fix this as soon as possible? thank you in advance.

I wondered if you could turn the listings to the right of the profile player into links to the watch page. This way, a left-click could still load the video into the profile through the onclick handler, but other navigation (like tabbed browsing, bookmarking) would still be available for those who want it.

Also, when you're on the watch page and click on "More from: user," at the bottom of the listing there is a link to the old view=videos that gives you an error now.

Is there any plan for updates for people who are browsing from their Nintendo Wii Console? The Wii uses the Opera browser and youtube channels are completely unusuable on there. None of the links work to view videos that have been uploaded. The only thing that will play is the featured video.

Although, I do like the new layout, I do have to agree with the those who say keeping the videos on a single page is hurting more than helping. I like being able to see related videos that are not my own. I often find some great stuff that way.

If you guys could make it easir to open a new window or new tab for videos that would be much appreciated.

Other than that, I'm digging the new look and I see that my other concerns are already on the 'to do' list so I won't bother bringing those issues up.

1) They make it difficult to get the DIRECT LINK of the Youtube video I am watching

Basically, it forces me to open a new window, go to Youtube, search for the title of the video I am watching, right click on the link and "copy URL".

This is ridiculous; there should be an easier way.

Because the new interface is Flash rather than html, I cannot right-click on a video link to get the URL.

2) They make it difficult or impossible to see a full list of all the public videos of a particular user, in chronological order of submission. Why is there even an option for this to be hidden information? If a user wants some videos to be hidden from view, he can make them private.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem or if its a problem with my Internet Explorer, but I have a bug of my own that I can't figure out. Everytime I try to search for a video, it takes me to a page where everything is in HTML and the all the video results are all pushed off to the left side of the page. Plus the text and links are all out of whack.

Please tell me how I can fix this because it's really making it hard for me to search. Please address this problem when you get a chance.

Not sure if its happening on other people's channels but the bar that shows "Settings", "Themes and Colors", and "Modules" is too wide vertically. It used to be only one line but now the "Revert! I want my old channel back" has wrapped to a second line, making the bar too wide vertically.My YouTube channel is youtube.com/movie3891.

I think I found a glitch. I've noticed this on all the channels that is beta.When you switch to grid view and click on a video, it takes you back to the player view but does not load the video that you clicked. It just stays at the featured video.

1.) Rather than the player view and grid view buttons, you could combine the two buttons into a single button so that you can toggle between player view and grid view. Click the button takes you to grid view. Click it again takes you back to the player view.

2.) For the featured video pulldown box, you should also add "Random" as an option so that each time someone visits your channel, the video that is featured is a random video.

3.) The "Uploads" button should be changed to "My Uploads", "My Videos", or "Videos".

For more advanced users who uses Photoshop to design their channels around the modules, I suggest a downloadable Photoshop template so that members can download and open the file in Photoshop and design their channel. It is possible to use the print screen button on the keyboard. However, because of my monitor size, only the top part of my channel gets copied and pasted into Photoshop. So if I wanted to design something towards the bottom of the page on my channel, I can't because I don't know the dimensions of the modules.

I AM LOVING THE NEW UPDATES ALL AROUND! I LOVE THE NEW CHANNEL BUT WILL STICK WITH MY OLD ONE UNTIL FURTHER BUGS ARE FIXED! ALSO JUST TO KEEP THE WHOLE YOUTUBE COMMUNITY HAPPY WHY NOT ALLOW A CHOICE BETWEEN OLD AND NEW CHANNELS?

@dxdfanx1: If they can't make it optional, they should make sure that the new channel has all the important features of the old one, so that no-one would have a good reason to miss it. Currently, the two basic features that I mentioned in my prior post do not work in the new channel (maybe intentionally? Is there some profit to be made from breaking those particular features?).

I'm using the beta channels on IE8, and when I change the theme and click "Save Changes", the spinning wheel pops up, then the theme tab closes. Whenever I click another tab, such as Settings, the spinning wheel is still over the "Save changes" button and I can't click it. I have to refresh the page to get rid of it.

i had this really great animating GIF that i used as my background image. i've had that background for over a year now, but recently i've noticed it wasn't there. when i went to upload it again, i got a message saying it was too big. now i found this strange due to the fact that i've used it perfectly for over a year without a problem. and by now, that backround has somewhat cemented itself as a major part of my channel, and i'm quite upset to see it gone. please fix this problem, for i'm very confused as to why the size parameters have changed, and i heavily hope that you wil enable the option for me to restore it.

1.) There needs to be an option for a member to delete a theme that he or she has created using the "new theme" button in "Themes and Colors".

2.) In the search box, make the "Search Uploads" look like a button rather than just text. Maybe you could make it look like the YouTube search button.

3.) The profile picture at the top of the channel is still way too small. See my channel for an example: youtube.com/movie3891. The profile picture next to the subscribe and add as friend button is about the right size.

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Everything else looks great. Compared to the old channel, the beta channel now feels like a channel. The old channel did not feel like a channel at all. I like that when you click on the video thumnails on the right side, the video plays on your left. It gives it a TV feel of flipping through the channels.

To any non-partners wanting banners,If you are wanting to add banners to your page, you can if you have Photoshop. Do you see the space between the left side of your monitor and the video player? That's empty space that can be used for your banner. However, it will be a verticle banner rather than horizontal. You can also add a banner to the right side. The only down side is that someone who still has a small monitor won't be able to see your banner. I use Photoshop Elements. Create a blank file that is 2048 x 1152 pixels. I'll let you figure out the rest because it will take up too much space here.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO US! Well, personally; I would like for you to allow transparency in the boxes (similar to the old channels) and room for a background picture or design. The new pages seem cramped, tight, and too 'boxed' in. If you allowed transparency; it would free up the cramped-tightness. We appreciate you keeping an open-mind into what we want. Thanks guys.

Since Favorite lists don't have such a prominent placing anymore, it seems redundant to keep the maximum amount to show at three. Please create the possibility to show an infinite amount of playlist on our channel page.

I would like an rss feed on a users recent activity. And will the old youtube groups move to the new youtube group design on july 15th? I would like to upgrade my group now but I dont see an option right now.

There's a bug when I switch to the new channel design. I've changed what's written in my channel description. But when I switch to the beta channel, it shows my old channel description. Also, there's no box that has the text in editing the channel so I can change it

Am not liking this at all. It is a total fail on so many levels I can't begin to name them all. May just drop viewing YouTube if this is its future. Sure I'll miss it. There is better (at this time at least) options out there right now.

Can you add a "hide" button for the Edit bar at the top of the channel when your viewing it? It gets in the way and you have to scroll down to view how you channel will look to other people.-MicroNik95youtube.com/micronik95

Liam - yeah, right now it takes an extra click per video to open the video in a new tab. You can click on the video to load it, and then right click (or middle click) on the "View related videos, comments, and more" link at the bottom of the info box (underneath the video).That said, this is one of the more popular requests we've heard, and we're looking into a way to let you do a single right click / open in a new tab directly from the right hand side of the video navigator - stay tuned.

Muzik4Machines - thanks - glad to hear things feel faster to you. There might be some extra tweaks we can make here, too. Re: the wrapper, actually, with the transparency options coming soon, we might actually allow the entire wrapper to disappear, which might open up some really interesting options for customization - we'll see.

Johnny - we know that folks would like to be able to pick between the old version of channels and the new; though this option would be nice, the ongoing maintenance and cost to do this would be prohibitive while making the user experience across the site inconsistent. Our goal is to launch early and launch often (especially while in beta!), so even though some may not like the new channel design at first, the UI will evolve and improve over time and each iteration we do will reflect your feedback.

Peculator - which playlist of yours should be deleted? Is the deleted one still in the list?

cheechun - thanks - we're keeping track of everyone with a missing video navigator and we hope to fix all these folks soon. I've added yours to the list.

regnila - do you think the "Comments (0)" text at the top helps?

Operalala - Re: full screen controls, that refers to being able to hit the "full screen" button in the player to expand the player to the entire screen. For right-clicking videos into new tabs, we're looking at some options - my response to Liam above has some more info. Re: high quality, try going to your My Account page, then Playback Setup, and choose "I have a fast connection - always play in high quality". Re: enabling all playlists to show up automatically by default, that's a great idea - we should definitely do that. Re: line breaks, yeah, that's a known bug. And yeah, folders would be very cool. Thanks for all your feedback!

paintinganddrawing - re: not being able to reorder more than one video in a playlist at once, that's not related to Channels 2.0 but it's definitely a bug - nice find. We've logged it. And your channel is looking great!

fc - no "Facebook-tizing" going on. :) We're not a social network, but we are a social video site - we've always had personal profiles, friends, subscriptions, etc - folks want to share and find videos with one another.

the7thbattalion - what's your channel name?

ginsenguy - thanks for your detailed feedback, even if we won't agree on everything. First off, re: links not working, or screenshots overlapping, it sounds like you're running into some UI bugs. Which browser are you using? We have some issues to work through in IE8 right now (and even IE6) if that's what you're using. Next, for deeper browsing (e.g. finding someone's first videos), have you tried the grid view (the icon in the upper-right corner)? It should make it easier to go through a lot of videos at once. And yeah, we know that paging through comments is broken (and has been for a while) - it has to do with scale of the site, and isn't a minor bug to fix - but we hope to be able to make this better soon.

dxdfanx1 - thanks for the bug report - we'll look into it.

MeMyselfAndPi - thanks for the feedback. 1) Yeah, we're seeing if there's something we can do here. 2) I think we should be able to make this better once we add re-ordering for your uploads and playlists (which will then carry over to the All view.)

Wiiloveit - thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, we might do something different with the Friend box. Picking top friends / subscriptions would be really cool (that's been a big one on my personal wish list for a while now). And resizing boxes would be cool.

Alan-kun - thanks for the feedback and suggestion. Right now we're not planning on having more than one player on channel pages, but there might be some interesting things we can do in the future to enable a different kind of vlog functionality.

lilacstar1 - in that case, you should like the upcoming transparency options. :)

Jaume - what's the channel info bug you're seeing?

Maxime - thanks for the detailed feedback. Your #3 is one of the things we're working on. Thanks for the bug report of the "approve friend invite" link. Re: block moving, we do support some of this, though there are limits to how much you can move around. Re: length, ratings, etc - yeah, there's room for more in grid view - we should definitely show more. Re: the hover state of showing 3 thumbnails, we're currently figuring out where and when to expand that feature beyond the "videos" tab. Re: the messaging system, yeah, it's not super powerful right now. Re: the video limit in playlists, I'll have to look into this - but the limit might be different in the embedded player versus what you can actually put into a playlist on youtube.com.

PCWizKid - nice channel. :)

AntneyW - thanks again for the feedback! Yeah, picking top subscribers (or randomizing) would be really cool. I'm skeptical the team will have time to get to this before we come out of beta, though. (Something for the future, though.) Being able to see the channel page as other users do - yeah - maybe one solution would be to just show the subscription and friend buttons regardless of who you are.

ralasinchains - yeah, some folks liked that in the early beta. We'll see if that's something we can add back as an eventual option.

KOHPelord - thanks for the feedback - unfortunately I don't think we can offer that level of customization - it would introduce a lot of weird problems to support it.

Darryl - Drag and drop would be very cool. Yeah, I'd want to show iJustine subscribing to my channel too. ;) Nice channel!

dragonite25801 - what browser are you using?

Person4623 - yeah, we've heard of Firefox something crashing on the Mac. We have a fix for this that we think will help - we plan to release it soon.

mathancompher - did you try turning the playlists on by clicking on the "edit" box in the upper-right corner of the video navigator?

twoarebetter - thanks for the suggestion - that might work and we're looking into it. And yeah, we're on top of the "more from: user" bug.

timeofmonth - yeah, things look broken on the Wii. We've got it on our bug list. Thanks for the report and the feedback. (And yeah, we're looking into opening into a new window / new tab as a possible option. For now, you can use the "View related videos, comments, and more" link.)

Niffiwan - no need to search - just use the "View related videos, comments, and more" link. Or click on the video title (though that's not right-clickable right now; known bug). Or click on the video player itself while the video is playing. Also, re: getting a full list of all public videos in chronological order - have you tried clicking on the "Uploads" tab (if it's not already selected?) It orders by date uploaded by default. You can also click on the "Grid" view in the upper right hand corner to switch to a larger browsing view.

AmyMcMahon - which browser are you using? Right now our biggest issues are in IE6 and IE8.

SamuKattz Sesaka - thanks for all the feedback! Yeah, the channel sharing feature isn't there right now. URLs aren't linking right now in the description box, but we plan to add that back in. And reverting color schemes - did this happen even after you hit the save button?

movie3891 - we haven't seen that one yet - but what browser are you using?

MicroNik95 - yeah, it would be nice to get rid of that bar if you don't need it. Re: Recent Activity, yes, at some point, if you have a lot of activity, we need to get rid of the oldest ones. We can't keep them around forever, unfortunately.

N/A - re: a grid video glitch - what browser are you using? Haven't heard of that one yet. Re: a random featured video, that could be fun. :) Re: renaming the Uploads section, we don't want to make it too long (there are length issues as it is), and "Videos" doesn't really work adjacent to "Favorites, Playlists," etc (they're all videos, after all). And a Photoshop template would be awesome - we'd love to offer that. Yes, deleting a theme is on our list. Re: ordering videos by drag and drop in grid view - you read our minds. :) Thanks for all of your suggestions!

TaurusOxford - we filed a bug on that one but I think we haven't dived into the IE8 bugs too deeply yet (I assume you're using IE8?) IE8 is on our cleanup to-do list before we transition everyone over to the new design. Apologies we haven't taken care of that one yet!

AleMMR95 - nice channel. :)

kevin - thanks for the bug report - we'll look into it.

nem_srb_4_life - The error messages you're getting sound odd, but in general, we're phasing out support for animated backgrounds.

John - it's not intentional to not let you switch back. What's your channel name?

Spritemoney - not in there right now, but we plan to add that back sooner or later.

MS - yes - we know that there is a bug with crashing in Firefox on the Mac. We've actually already got a fix for it, and plan to release it soon.

brawlmaster08 - we port your settings (channel description, etc) over from your old channel to the new channel the moment you opt in. But, after you opt in the first time, if you go back and change settings on your old channel, we don't automatically carry them over to the new one. So you need to edit them on the new channel as well. Just click the "edit" link in the upper-right corner of the profile box, then click within whatever field you want to edit (about me, description, etc).

Jonny Paula - allowing you to subscribe to playlists is on our todo list.

The Era of Athena - we know that folks would like to be able to pick between the old version of channels and the new; though this option would be nice, the ongoing maintenance and cost to do this would be prohibitive while making the user experience across the site inconsistent. Our goal is to launch early and launch often (especially while in beta!), so even though some may not like the new channel design at first, the UI will evolve and improve over time and each iteration we do will reflect your feedback.

GUgamer - not that many folks use Quicklist actually, but yeah, that's on our list. Thanks!

I believe there are two previous comments that mention this problem. After clicking on "(more info)" when viewing a video's information, the scrollbar does not scroll the description. This makes it impossible to read the rest of the description.

One feature that I would find useful would be to have the option to choose how your profile is set up a little bit better. Right now we can choose to have the uploads, favorites, and playlists given their own tab at the top, and can choose which (or all) are shown when a user first loads the page, but not a combination. I would like to show all my uploads but have one playlist's icon shown, like on my old page. I always have all my videos shown, but I had one playlist that was acting as a "folder" for one genre of videos I upload.

Also being able to move the boxes around a little more, space them out more, etc. would most likely satisfy more people and even add to the creative uniqueness each channel possesses.

Other than minor corrections, bug fixes, and touch-ups, I really like the new channels. I find they make watching videos quicker, easier, more fun, and just overall a different, more-involved experience. I just watched a video on the "old page" and felt like I was on a foreign planet, I've gotten so used to the new ones. xD

I know I'm forgetting some things, but I can't remember right now...But the channels are looking fantastic so far.

More advanced options for tiling background images would be a great update.

Option for separate favourites box would make a big difference for those worried about the mandatory update. I like to be able to quickly see what people have favourited and creates a lot more click through to different user's channels.

Nice 'beta' channel - i really like it! BUT a question: Is this still a bug or just wanted cause how get user access to 'ALL' my videos and favorites?? I have 90 videos but there show up only 24 and no scroll bar or something to get to the rest of my videos/favorites? any help? Thanks!http://youtube.com/speedster4235

I know that one major problem people have with the design is the fixed location of the Profile box. Maybe at the least, the ability to move it to a different spot (even if it's not possible to have it where I mentioned before)?

I've also been told that Partner accounts have the option to turn the 'Video Navigator' module on or off. I'm not quite sure I understand the logic behind doing so... but I mention it here because it may be related to the bug where some people (who are not Partners) don't have that module on their channel.

"Re: high quality, try going to your My Account page, then Playback Setup, and choose "I have a fast connection - always play in high quality"."Yes, I this is what I am doing, and the "always play in high quality" option simply is not sticking, it reverts back to "choose my video quality dynamically based on the current connection speed", then does not recognize my high speed connection, and the vids default to "normal" quality.

uhm i dont know if this is a bug or not butwhen im watching a video and i pause it andlook through the video(when its not playing)then sometimes IE8 shuts down without warningthis also happend a few times when watching a few favorites in the beta channelhope i explained the bug well enough

Not really sure if this has been said but if you could somehow search for any video on youtube at your channel or maybe be able to get a background image and be able to move it around that would make it better.

sometimes on my channel (and any other beta channel for that matter) when the page loads it stays for 1 second the vanishes. i have to refresh a few times to get it to stay. and if i click on a video on the right side, it does the same thing, but you can hear the audio. the source code stays the same. and when viewing the code, it had no sign of any JavaScript vanishing tricks. my username is thecomputernerd1 and i use Firefox 3.0.11.

Brian,By the way, great job replying today. Those were LOTS of replies you did.

I am really liking the new channel. We've needed a new channel design for a long time. I'm so glad for the new channel. I don't think a new major channel design should be released too often. Maybe every two year or so. Or better yet, let the channels evolve slowly over time, the same way the YouTube website evolved slowly with the redesigning of the tabs, etc.

Just wanted to say I appreciate you looking into my question and responding especially since I didn't think you would. It was a nice surprise. ;) Glad to see that you guys are working on the Wii problem and creating new tabs.

I tried the new format several weeks ago and didn't care for it. I don't remember if Autoplay could be disabled or not. I know a lot of users are upset about no transparency and are not aware you guy's have fixed that.

I did like some features of the new format.

I'd like the option to keep the current format, but I can't complain when I'm getting free YouTube.

Whenever I click on anything while using one of my new beta channel designs, most of the time an error message appears. It reads: "an error occurred performing this operation." The message disappears and everything is fine. So, even though everything is working just fine, the error messages appear for no reason. It is very annoying.

lovin' it!one only concern of mine at the moment is that i like to browse some accounts videos - all of them. it's very easy on the new channels, but the thing is that whenever i accecidentaly click on the video itself, it opens up in a new tab and then there, i can't actually view all the account's videos in that side pannel of the video viewing, example: youtube.com/profile?user="accountname"&view=videos won't work with new accounts. dunno, maybe not a big deal...dunno :P cheers

ah yes, just found the right words to use now. basically, it's only a tad bit frustrating when people with o.c.d such as myself click on the video whilst viewing it in the new channel design and it opens up in a new tab, and the video that was playing on the new channel design has stopped and lost it's place on the progress/playing bar.

Oh - also - the "sidebar" - gotta have it handy in the new format! (I don't want to open and reload the video on a new tab.)The "sidebar" is so very important to me as a browser, and linking to other new users I have not seen before! Thanks

Brian, I already asked this question before, but is it possible to please keep the video log? I use my channel to help starting YouTubers and I love to have a little place where I can show some videos from others with a brief message of encouragement. I'm really missing that feature in the new design.

As it's going to be, everything is in the video player now. It's an "either... or" situation: either I show my own instructional videos or I feature the work of others. The great thing about the old designs was that I had multiple places to promote videos.

@Esperanza: trying on new things is fine. Emphasize on "trying" though! I find it REALLY scary that we're forced into a new design that's still in beta. Brian already said there are issues that aren't going to be fixed before July 15th. So why not just keep the choice for at least a month after going live, just to see what issues arise and what needs to be tackled?

Would like to see more thumbnails of our videos without scrolling. Not in grid form because that would do little to promote our featured video. I would like to see more thumbnails of our uploads featured more prominently.

And please allow us to choose which should be the recommended videos, not simply by sorting them according to time of upload.

BTW, it's terribly irritating needing to scroll that "sidebar" for videos when we have to scroll for the page already. Double scrolling is too troublesome. The whole layout is too "squeezed".

And its definitely a joke recent activities take up more space than recommended videos. Please do more to understand the marketing works users require with the channel.

How about getting the todo-list done BEFORE you force the new beta on us?

Sorry, I don't get it. I have seen so much criticism on the new channels - how can you guys not react to that? There are still so many bugs:- You can't right-click the video links.- no rating stars in the overview- ugly fat borders everywhere (oh, you mean, it's actually a feature - ok, I'm sorry then ;) )- Videos are still called "Uploads". WTF?- profile information is basically out of view on the channels. Well hidden guys. Hey, it's only the mail information about US, but who cares?

BTW: The comment boxes in this blog suck. Can't even use the arrow keys properly :-(

i have issues in otally differnt areas. I use Firefox 3.5, but the issues also apply to every Firefox 3 version. I open one of my "Playlists". E.g. I want to move some videos from position "23" to "1". So I click on the number "23" and replace it iwth a "1". I can move the first video. However when I try to move the next video the layout freezes and I cannot move the video.Instead, I have to reload the whole page and move another video.

Please! Can you fix that? It seems teh more you guys work on the new channel the more bugs appear outside the new channel.Besides that you guys are doing a great job!

PLEASE make this new change optional. Many people are outraged by the loss of the old layout, including myself, and are deleting their videos and leaving Youtube for sites that listen to their community.

Eh, the new channel's starting to grow on me, but I have a suggestion. I wouldn't mind seeing the bulletins back again, I really enjoyed that feature, it was an easy way to tell someone if you were online or offline, stuff like that. I think bulletins could make a welcome comeback.

found a bug, all video views from the featured videos are now counted, BUT, they show in the analytics(insight) as viral/other (i would say im pretty sure the tetis vid was seen from my page and not linked virally 1000 times in the past 36 hours, as my page(that as the video set to autoplay(by choice) was linked from this very blog)

really cool that transparency is coming soon, i already started working on a new background to accomodate it :)

@SC, i guess the IE8 bugS will all come fixed at the same time, not under the radar as most updates to the design are made, as they probably all depend on some backend code, but as per the other blog, they are really aware of it it seems

I like the new beta channels, but there is a problem with the description of the beta channel. I can't edit it when I want to. There is no option to edit that text in the edit channel section. Could you guys fix that, please?

Also, we should have the option to choose whether to have the new channel or not after July 15th. There are many YouTubers that do not like the new design.

This is me again regarding the grid glitch. I have made a video illustrating the glitch. The video is at the end of this reply. You may need to make the video full screen to see it better. My browser is IE8. I am using Windows Vista. This glitch is not isolated to my computer. It also happens on another computer. Also, the glitch not only occurs on my channel but on the channels of other YouTube members.Here is the video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLKS107y7Co

In one of my suggestions above, I said that the "Search uploads" button should be replaced with an actual search button, like the light blue search button used to search YouTube videos.To see how this would look, I screen captured my channel and pasted it into Photoshop. I then erased "Search upload" and replaced it with the light blue search button. It looked much better than the plain text "search uploads" button.Then I was thinking that maybe the color of search button on the channel could be changed to match the channel's "Themes and colors".Not sure if this would be complicated to do but just thought it was a good idea. I'm just throwing ideas out there that may help improve the channels.

Looks like there is so much to do in so little time. July 15 is the date of the launch of the channel, which is only 10 days from now. Maybe the launch date should be pushed back to August 1. You guys are doing a great job.

This beta blog has been great. Its like a big brainstorming session. This kind of blog should also be done for the YouTube site itself. I like the interaction between the YouTube team (Brian) and YouTube members.

I agree that it should be optional, although the new channel designs look great, I'm not really a big fan of the video player.I would like to have the option of playing a video (such as one in my favorites) in its own link, and not in the video player on my profile (sorry if it's confusing, I'm not sure how to word it)I've talked to some of my friends about it and they also agree on that feature.

This is regarding opening videos in its own window (playing videos in its own link).

It seems like alot of people want to be able to watch a video from someone's channel on a separate window rather than from the channel itself. Of course you could always click on "View comments, related videos, and more" button below the channel's player to open the video in a separate page. But it would be faster to have a button next to each video thumbnail.

I suggest that an icon/symbol button be added below each video thumbnail on the list at the right side and in grid view. This icon, when clicked, would open a video in a new window or tab. In my opinion (the reason why I never suggested it before), adding an icon/symbol would make the video list look too cluttered.

An alternate solution, for IE8 (not sure how other browsers work), is to be able to right click on the video link and click "open in new window" and "open in new tab".

The ability to move the profile information to the top of the page would be nice. When moved to the top, the profile would change to horizontal rather than verticle.

However, I think that YouTube is wanting the location of the profile information to be consistent for everyone, which I understand, and I guess is a good thing. When you go to each person's channel, you don't want to have to look all over the page to find the profile information. Having a profile in one fixed location allows you know automatically where to look.

for partners i hate how the ads are by the videos, then it's harder to scroll through the videos, like this channel for example: http://youtube.com/Jpizzle1122 . Please remove that feature, or if you do, so a thing like See all in 1 page, or like how the OLD youtube channels did.

SamuKattz Sesaka - thanks for all the feedback! Yeah, the channel sharing feature isn't there right now. URLs aren't linking right now in the description box, but we plan to add that back in. And reverting color schemes - did this happen even after you hit the save button?

--Yes indeed. I do remember clicking on the 'Save Changes' button and then leave the Themes and Colors section. After I leave my channel and back, it reverts to my previous settings. Sometimes it keeps the new color theme and sometimes it doesn't. It looks like a default negating glitch or something.

There should be an option to replace the new video navigator thing on the top of the page with just a box with the featured video, followed by the playlist box, then the boxes with the uploaded videos and favorites, simmilar to the old channels. This will be very nice and also solve the problem of people not liking the new channels.

New channels are ugly and too compact. You're trying to put too many things in a too small space, a lot of which are useless.A channel page should be simple and clean. JUST LIKE THE OLD ONES. The old channel look is FINE.

Not being able to see the comments as I watch the videos is a disadvantage. In order to comment, one has to go off the main page anyway. It encourages the very thing we youtubers don't like; viewers not commenting. This sucks but hey its free. I will switch over now because you all are going to do it anyway.

Also, for those of you who think that most of us love the beta channel and keep saying that we hate it 'cause we "don't want change" even though you've seen the YouTube blog and all the protest videos and accounts, go jump in a lake. It's so freaking obvious how many of us HATE the new beta channel, but users such as Muzik 4 Machines and Yarko keep saying that "Not everyone's a hater like you." Pathetic. Shows that they have SOME connection with YouTube.

BUG REPORT: IE7 and IE8 do not allow playing a video from grid view. FF3 seems to work correctly. This is a new problem (at least in IE7 it worked earlier.)

This bug was reported above, but I didn't see many problem details.

DETAILS: When I click to select a video on the grid in IE7, it reverts back to the non-grid window but doesn't show the selected video. When I do the same in IE8, it throws an error message and asks if I want to debug.

Brian, thanks for the replies, great to hear you are working on the open in new tab as that seems to be the biggest problem with the new layout. Just to let you know I have had Firefox crash more than a few times on Win XP. Usually when going to grid mode then hitting the back button.

I dont't know whether you read my comment about a BUG: you can't scroll down the text correctly (after clicking 'more info') in the video information box on the main channel when using IE 8. A part of the text stays at its position while the other part moves as it should. Thanks.

I have some thoughts on what the new YouTube channels should include. This is in a bid to make my subscribers experiences more pleasurable...

1. Allow playlists to be shared with a share button like on the old channel.

2. Allow playlists to be organised in Alphabetically / Randomly or allow us to customise which order they appear.

3. You cannot edit the new group pages once they have been set. Can we please be allowed to edit these details.

4. When selecting most viewed I have videos with higher view count lower down than those with lower view count. Its a bit mixed up.

5. The top rated button seems very hit and miss. My videos always seem in a different order.

6. Can we have most discussed as a sort option too?

7. I would like to give my subscribers an option as to whether or not they want me to share videos with them. At the moment you have to share with everyone or pick out names which is very time consuming. Is there a better way this can be done?

8. I would like a module that is specifically available for contact information. I am trying to develop my channel into a central hub for my aviation and shipping videos and this could be useful.